The National Survey of Substance Abuse Treatment Services (N-SSATS) is designed to collect information from all facilities in the United States, both public and private, that provide substance abuse treatment. N-SSATS provides the mechanism for quantifying the dynamic character and composition of the United States substance abuse treatment delivery system. The objectives of N-SSATS are to collect multipurpose data that can be used to assist the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administ... (more info)

The National Survey of Substance Abuse Treatment Services (N-SSATS) is designed to collect information from all facilities in the United States, both public and private, that provide substance abuse treatment. N-SSATS provides the mechanism for quantifying the dynamic character and composition of the United States substance abuse treatment delivery system. The objectives of N-SSATS are to collect multipurpose data that can be used to assist the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and state and local governments in assessing the nature and extent of services provided and in forecasting treatment resource requirements, to update SAMHSA's Inventory of Substance Abuse Treatment Services (I-SATS), to analyze general treatment services trends, and to generate the National Directory of Drug and Alcohol Abuse Treatment Programs and its online equivalent, the Substance Abuse Treatment Facility Locator.

N-SSATS is a point-prevalence survey. It provides information on the substance abuse treatment system and its clients on the reference date (March 31, 2008). Client counts do not represent annual totals. Rather, N-SSATS provides a "snapshot" of substance abuse treatment facilities and clients on an average day.

N-SSATS collects data about facilities, not individual clients. Data on clients represent an aggregate of clients in treatment for each reporting facility.

N-SSATS attempts to obtain responses from all known treatment and prevention facilities, but it is a voluntary survey. There is no adjustment for the approximately 5 percent facility nonresponse.

To protect the privacy of respondents, financial data originally collected have been removed from the public use file. These modifications should not affect most analytic uses of the public use file.

N-SSATS is a point-prevalence survey. It provides information on the substance abuse treatment system and its clients on the reference date (March 31, 2008). Client counts do not represent annual totals. Rather, N-SSATS provides a "snapshot" of substance abuse treatment facilities and clients on an average day.

N-SSATS collects data about facilities, not individual clients. Data on clients represent an aggregate of clients in treatment for each reporting facility.

N-SSATS attempts to obtain responses from all known treatment and prevention facilities, but it is a voluntary survey. There is no adjustment for the approximately 5 percent facility nonresponse.

To protect the privacy of respondents, financial data originally collected have been removed from the public use file. These modifications should not affect most analytic uses of the public use file.

Methodology

Sample:
The Inventory of Substance Abuse Treatment Services
(I-SATS) provides the sampling frame for N-SSATS. Two categories of treatment facilities in I-SATS may be distinguished. The largest group of facilities includes those that are licensed, certified, or otherwise approved by the state substance abuse agency to provide substance abuse treatment. The second group represents the SAMHSA effort in recent years to make I-SATS as comprehensive as possible by
including treatment facilities that state substance abuse agencies, for a variety of reasons, do not license or certify. Many of these facilities are private, for-profit, small group practices, or hospital-based programs.

Response Rates:
N-SSATS questionnaires were mailed to a total of 17,323 facilities believed to offer substance abuse treatment services. Of these facilities, 11.5 percent were found to be ineligible for the survey because they had closed or did not provide substance abuse treatment or detoxification on March 31, 2008. Of the remaining 15,335 facilities, 94.1 percent (14,423) completed the survey. However, 404 of these facilities were deemed to be out of scope, and an additional 331 facilities reported client counts included in or "rolled into" other facilities' counts and whose facility characteristics were not reported separately. Therefore, the final sample size was 13,688 (89.3 percent). The percentage of respondents who completed the survey via the mail was 32.9, while 18.7 percent completed the survey via telephone, and 48.4 percent completed the survey using a Web-based questionnaire.

Extent of Processing: ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of
disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major
statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to
these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

Performed consistency checks.

Created variable labels and/or value labels.

Standardized missing values.

Created online analysis version with question text.

Performed recodes and/or calculated derived variables.

Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

Restrictions: Users are reminded by the United States Department of
Health and Human Services that these data are to be used solely for statistical analysis and reporting of aggregated information and not for the investigation of specific individuals or treatment facilities.

Version(s)

Original ICPSR Release:2010-01-20

Version History:

2014-04-25 This study update was done in order to remove the geographic variables of County, MSA, and CBSA.